One of my first memories of teaching was when I was training as a summer school teacher. The kids were coming into the building for the first time, and my lead teacher was sitting at her desk. Out of nowhere a student came into her classroom and said:
“Is this Ms. Johnson*? You’re the reason why I’m here! You failed me!”
At that moment I was in shock. I didn’t know how to handle those situations as someone entirely new to teaching. However, my lead teacher, completely unfazed, rolled her eyes and said:
“No, you failed yourself. Go to class.”
The student promptly did.
I now understand that line is customary and normal among teachers, and I heard it on several more occasions. Ultimately, accountability is on the individual and the student. And making connections to myself as an athlete, accountability was always on me, not my coach.
While we often don’t take credit for other people’s failures, I can’t say the same about other people’s success. I have seen many teachers take credit for students’ success. And I have seen many coaches take credit for athletes’ success. I have overseen students increase their reading levels by six grades this school year, but I have to stop myself.
The success is entirely the students. Not me.
It’s also a common conversation in parenting: parents should not take credit for their kids’ success. But it’s easy to fall into that trap. When I got into Emory University, my parents bragged to the whole world about what a good job they did of parenting. They wanted better for me, but they were proud. I was glad they were proud of me, but the conversation made me feel like I was a racehorse.
“Look at how good we did as parents!” they would say.
I think it’s a fine line. There are a million factors that contribute to success, and if we’re the successful ones, it’s better not to say “it was all me and no one else helped.” There is a running coach in the running world that takes a tremendous amount of credit for his athletes’ success, and many runners find it off-putting.
And when we do not take credit for students’, athletes, or kids’ success, we stop blaming ourselves for their failures as well. It’s easy to blame yourself as a teacher when students are not making progress or are not coming to school. But a million external factors go into failures as well, and sometimes no one is to blame. Sometimes, the cards just fall into the right places and the wrong places. There will always be an instinct to try to find the root of the problem, and that can often mean finding someone to blame.
“Gotcha culture” in corporate and bureaucratic environments often operates under the assumption that if one person falls on the sword, is cast out, or takes the fall for a crisis, everything will be fixed. But life does not work like that, and societal ills or systemic problems are not fixed with the good deeds or negligence of any one individual.
Someone once told me a great life skill to have is making small accomplishments seem like grandiose feats, especially in job interviews. Playing up our role in any situation, no matter how trivial, is deemed a great skill and a way of inflating our image to others. I know that’s how life works and sometimes the games we think we need to play to get jobs and move up.
But when we use others in those equations, when we use our kids, our students, and our athletes as vessels to live through, we inevitably dehumanize them. I know my culture is different from my parents. I would much rather have parents who take credit and care than parents who don’t.
With taking credit also comes the pressure, that if we fail the people who take credit for our successes and failures, they will take it personally. If our failures are their failures, if our successes are their successes, the pressure will eventually suffocate us.
When we stop taking credit, we let people breathe and take the pressure off. That freedom is what most of us crave and ask for.
*Name changed to maintain confidentiality
Originally published on Medium on June 3, 2021.